Workshop Theme

The workshop aims to bring together researchers who work in theoretical aspects of cryptography (principally, provable security of protocols) with people working on applied aspects of cryptography, particularly people involved in standardization and in industrial deployment of cryptography. The main goal of the workshop is to strengthen the dialogue between these two groups of people, which is currently perceived to be quite weak. Ultimately, we aim to make a start on bridging the divide between what academic cryptographers believe should be the goals of cryptographic protocol design and what is actually deployed in the real world. The potential benefits of doing so are:

To bring a better understanding of real-world cryptographic issues to the theoretical community, helping to inform their research and set new research challenges for the theoretical community;

Enabling practitioners to develop a clearer view of the current state-of-the-art in cryptographic research and what it offers to practice;

Providing a forum for exchanging ideas and building relationships between researchers from the different communities.

The Workshop is supported by the Newton Institute, the eCrypt-2 European Network of Excellence in Cryptography and by the EPSRC Leadership Fellowship award of Prof. Kenny Paterson.